During my 2016–17 Fulbright fellowship in Taiwan, I had the opportunity to visit the Taoyuan factory of Sheng Kuang 聖光 (Sacred Radiance), a leading manufacturer of Buddhist statuary whose finished work can be found in temples and sacred sites across Taiwan and other parts of Asia. While the company produces Buddhist images of every size, some of their…

Taiwan is a welcoming, multicultural environment offering wonderful opportunities to international scholars. I have known Taiwan for 30 years, having first come at age 28 to teach English for a summer at the Tainan YMCA, and returning a year later for Chinese language study at the Stanford Center at National Taiwan University. After earning my PhD in East…

The story I want to tell has a clear beginning but no clear end. It starts like this: On December 23, 1942,Takamori Takasuke, the commanding officer of Japanese soldiers stationed in Nanjing, was overseeing the construction of an Inari Shinto shrine just outside of the city’s southern gate. While excavating the shrine’s foundation, his men discovered the…

The flight to Taipei was a 13 hour-long tunnel through about a million movies, and Taipei was a glimmer of signs in the dark. We've woken up in a gorgeous hotel room. Outside the window it's Times Square but with palm trees. Next, we drive south to Taichung. Maia: "I could get used to Taiwanese hospitality." We're in…